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Seminar Report ’09Tempest and Echelon

1. INTRODUCTION

The notion of spying is a very sensitive topic after the September 11attack of Terrorists in New York. In the novel 1984, George Orwell foretold afuture where individuals had no expectation of privacy because the statemonopolized the technology of spying. Now the National security Agency Of USA developed a secret project to spy on people for keep tracing their messages to make technology enabled interception to find out the terroristactivities across the globe, named as Echelon. Leaving the technology ahead of the any traditional method of interception .The secret project Developed by NSA (National Security Agency of USA) and its allies is tracing every single transmission even a single of keyboard. The allies of USA in this project are UK, Australia, New Zealandand Canada. Echelon is developed with the highest computing power of computers connected through the satellites all over the world. In this projectthe NSA left the wonderful method of Tempest and Carnivores behind.Echelon is the technology for sniffing through the messages sent over a network or any transmission media, even it is wireless messages. Tempest isthe technology for intercepting the electromagnetic waves over the air. Itsimply sniffs through the electromagnetic waves propagated from any devices,even it is from the monitor of a computer screen. Tempest can capture thesignals through the walls of computer screens and keystrokes of key boardeven the computer is not connected to a network. Thus the traditional way of hacking has a little advantage in spying.

Dept. of CSCAS Thodupuzha

Seminar Report ’09Tempest and Echelon

For the common people it is so hard to believe that their monitor can be reproduced from anywhere in one kilometer range without any transmissionmedia in between the equipment and their computer. So we have to believe thetechnology enabled us to reproduce anything from a monitor of computer tothe Hard Disks including the Memory (RAM) of a distant computer withoutany physical or visual contact. It is done with the Electromagnetic waves propagated from that device.The main theory behind the Tempest(Transient ElectromagneticPulse Emanation Standard.) is that any electronic or electrical devices emitElectromagnetic radiations of specific key when it is operated. For example the picture tube of computer monitor emits radiations when it is scanned up onvertical of horizontal range beyond the screen. It will not cause any harm to ahuman and it is very small. But it has a specific frequency range. You canreproduce that electromagnetic waves by tracing with the powerful equipmentsand the powerful filtering methods to correct the errors while transmissionfrom the equipment. Actually this electromagnetic waves are not necessary for a human being because it not coming from a transmitter, but we have areceiver to trace the waves.For the project named as Echelon the NSA is using supercomputersfor sniffing through the packets and any messages send as the electromagneticwaves. They are using the advantage of Distributed computing for this. Firstlythey will intercept the messages by the technology named as the Tempest andalso with the Carnivore. Every packet is sniffed for spying for the USA’s NSAfor security reasons.

Dept. of CSCAS Thodupuzha

Seminar Report ’09Tempest and Echelon

Interception of communications is a method of spying commonlyemployed by intelligence services, For an intelligence agency they are makeuse of the spies for the secret services for government to provide the securityof government and the people. So they can use any methods to ensure thesecurity of people including spying, it is not guilt. It depends on the target weare aiming. To capture the terrorists before they can make any harm to people,we must keep the technology ahead. We, Engineers are behind that project of NSA and so we have to aware of that technology for enabling our INDIA alsoin this field. Because it is used mainly by the security agencies and spies allover the world even though there is a lack of equipments for this purpose.Equipments for Tempest spying is available in USA and is prohibited of exporting from there. Some smuggled equipments may be here. But we have todevelop the systems for our Military and Intelligence Agencies for ensuringthe best security for our people.While Considering about the limitations of the surveillance system,The issues depends in particular, upon worldwide interception of satellitecommunications, although in areas characterised by a high volume of communications only a very small proportion of those communications aretransmitted by satellite; whereas this means that the majority of communications cannot be intercepted by earth stations, but only by tappingcables and intercepting radio signals, something which -as the investigationscarried out in connection with the report have shown - is possible only to alimited extent; whereas the numbers of personnel required for the final analysisof intercepted communications imposes further restrictions; whereas, therefore,the UKUSA states have access to only a very limited proportion of cable andradio communications and can analyze an even more limited proportion of those communications, and whereas, further, however extensive the resourcesand capabilities for the interception of communications may be, the extremelyhigh volume of traffic makes exhaustive, detailed monitoring of allcommunications impossible in practice.